Marketing your small business is challenging. There’s no straight and narrow path to greatness, and there’s a lot of trial and error as you strive to get it right.

Simon Sinek — motivational speaker and marketing consultant — once said, “ People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Besides spreading the word about your product or service, marketing plays a crucial role in letting people know the “why” behind your brand. 

Digital marketing trends are constantly changing, and the landscape is full of various strategies that promise results. As a result, you’re bound to encounter mistakes and challenges that hinder you from promoting your product and telling a compelling “why” story. 

But not if you know those mistakes ahead of time. In this article, we’ll highlight six marketing mistakes to avoid this year (and next). 

1. Assuming Your Audience is Everyone

Everyone starts a business hoping to woo as many customers as possible. While there’s nothing wrong with that, the innate desire to grow a huge customer base shouldn’t blind you into thinking everyone is a potential customer. 

Customers respond well to personalized marketing, and there are a ton of tools out there that can help you tailor each message you send to the right recipient. But if you’re too busy marketing to everyone, you’ll end up sending generic messages and campaigns, and your target audience will lose interest.  

Before you kick off a marketing campaign, research your target audience. Know their needs and preferences, where they hang out online, and what they like or dislike about your product or service. Know as much about them as possible, and make sure you regroup every year or so to determine if anything has changed about your target audience. It’s possible your target audience can change completely over time. 

This information will help you deliver personalized campaigns and tweak your product to better solve customer problems. 

2. Failure to Align Brand and Service Niche

While telling your “why” story is critical if it doesn’t tie into your overarching business goal, it’s worthless. Your “why” should align with your brand, industry, and audience. 

If the story isn’t aligned with those three components, users may struggle to understand how your product can solve their problems. Nike does a great job of tying their “why” to their marketing. 

Take their Equality Campaign, for example. The company highlights sports’ ability to bring people together, and as a company that outfits athletes and active lifestyles in general, this campaign ties into their “why” nicely. 

3. Overlooking Email Marketing

Marketing strategies such as search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing are geared toward sending people to relevant pages on a website. Some marketers stop at these strategies when they see an uptick in organic traffic, thinking it’s enough to drive more sales. 

Sadly, only a measly 2% of first-time web visitors buy from your website. 98% never take action, and if you don’t entice them back, they may never return. Email marketing helps get these customers back to your website with attractive offers. Sometimes, sending them an email about how your products work is all it takes to convert them. 

Besides that, email enables you to keep your business top of customers’ minds. You send the discount to entice them to come back, influential emails to build your authority, and educational articles to help them navigate the bumpy business landscape. 

The good thing with email is that your strategy isn’t at the mercy of an algorithm like Google. You’re in charge of every aspect of the content you send. Even better, email has a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every dollar spent — the best ROI in the marketing scene. 

For this to work, it’s important for your website to have forms that encourage people to sign up for your email marketing. Popup forms are great because they can appear at the sign of exit intent, gathering information from a site visitor before they leave your site. 

4. Not Conducting Enough A/B Tests

Most of the aspects of your marketing campaigns have alternatives: the email subject line, content format, CTAs, etc. The problem is that picking the right choice isn’t always straightforward. This is where A/B testing comes in handy. 

An A/B test enables you to determine which version of your campaign will deliver optimal results. For example, you could A/B test two email subject lines to see which one brings a higher open rate. Or, put two versions of a CTA button through the wringer to pick one that inspires customers to click. 

A/B test enables marketers to stick with the best strategies out of the available options. Despite the benefits, 44% of brands rarely use A/B tests for their email and other marketing campaigns. If you’re one of them, the time is ripe for adding the A/B test to your process and seeing what you uncover. 

5. Not Leveraging Automation

Marketing automation increases sales productivity by 14.5% and reduces overheads by 12.2%. Yet, only 20% of businesses utilize marketing automation tools to the fullest potential. Failing to leverage marketing automation denies you the cutting edge you need to compete in the digital era. 

Done well, marketing automation drives better segmentation and hyper-personalized email campaigns. It’s also great for your sales and marketing strategies as it allows your teams to capitalize on opportunities to convert. For example, if someone downloads a guide on your site, you can track that download and follow up by sending them blog content related to that guide. They’ll love that you provided them with needed resources and will be more inclined to take the next step with your brand. 

6. Monitoring Vanity Metrics

As the adage goes: You can’t improve what you can’t measure. To improve your marketing strategy and achieve the stipulated goals, you have to find a way to measure progress. However, many marketers stumble in this regard because they pursue vanity metrics. 

Peter Drucker has a piece of advice when it comes to tracking progress. “You must move from metrics keeping score to metrics that drive better actions.” For example, if you want to increase organic traffic on your website, don’t fixate on the traffic numbers. Instead, track metrics like social shares and the number of backlinks to your site you’re able to achieve each month. 

Also, keep your fingers on the pulse of industry trends to understand how the significance of key metrics is changing. For example, while open rates have been a key metric for email marketing, updates such as Apple’s Mail Protection Policy could reduce its significance. In the future, the open rate may be a vanity metric for email marketers. 

Make sure you keep these six mistakes in mind while you’re facilitating your marketing strategy this year. Hopefully, by having these on your radar, you can correct some wrongs or avoid them altogether.

The internet gave birth to an exciting new field – digital marketing. Businesses can reach thousands of potential customers worldwide without spending thousands on elaborate marketing campaigns.

When using digital tools to spread your message, there’s one important thing to keep in mind: data privacy. This article will explain everything digital marketers need to know about data privacy as it relates to digital marketing.

What is Data Privacy?

In an age where almost all human data is available and shared online, it’s unsurprising that questions about data privacy and security have come up.

Data privacy is particularly relevant in digital marketing since consumer data is crucial in:

• Developing personalized customer experiences
• Delivering marketing campaigns
• Gathering insights on consumer behavior

Data privacy can be defined as the ability to determine how data is distributed, used, and shared online. In some jurisdictions, data privacy is regarded as a human right. In others, businesses are allowed to use data as they please.

Here are some ways personal data can be misused:

• Gathered without the user’s consent
• Sold to third parties for a profit
• Tracking and monitoring user behavior

Why Data Privacy is Important

Regardless of jurisdiction, data privacy is always important. To engage with companies, people want reassurance that the data they provide will be handled with care. That’s why many organizations have implemented data protection practices that show their dedication to keeping and handling user-provided data with care.

Companies that engage in shady customer data management practices, or experience data breaches due to a lack of security measures, run the risk of ruining their reputation and losing a ton of money.

Data Privacy Laws

Over the past decade, data privacy laws have become stricter. Companies that don’t comply risk receiving hefty fines and public slander.

Some world regions take data privacy a bit more seriously than others, but the overall direction is towards stricter data control and regulations.

Perhaps the most popular and influential privacy law is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The GDPR came into effect in May 2018 and kickstarted a wave of privacy laws that transformed how businesses were allowed to interact with consumers on the internet.

The GDPR advocates for “Privacy by Design.” This approach to data management limits data collection and involves creating security measures to prevent data breaches and leaks. 

The GDPR also requires consent and complete transparency throughout the data gathering process. All companies doing business in the EU must abide by these rules, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure your business complies regardless of where you’re located. 

Data Privacy Tips for Digital Marketers

Digital marketers have to adapt to the changing laws and user expectations. That means implementing changes in how they execute their campaigns and gather insights.

Here are five best practices on data privacy in digital marketing:

1. Transparency

Being transparent with your data-handling practices isn’t just ethical. It’s also required by law in many places. Website visitors or campaign targets should know how their data is being used and for what purposes.

If your site uses cookies, ask for permission to use them. Some sites block content if people don’t accept cookies. You should avoid that because it sends the message that your main goal is to exploit users instead of providing value. 

Digital marketing is all about connecting your excellent product or service to people that need it, not squeezing every possible dollar out of a customer.

2. Offer Something in Return 

Private data is valuable. It’s rather selfish of you to ask for it without giving anything in return. Create exciting campaigns involving promo codes or discounts in exchange for a user’s personal information. Gating your content by requesting contact information is another option. But make sure the content you’re gating is high-quality, unique, and offers value. 

This practice is becoming increasingly popular. If you’re creative, you can come up with many interesting ways to “trade” with your customers.

3. Make It Easy to Opt-Out

If a user agrees to share their data, that doesn’t mean you get to keep it and use it forever. Many people unknowingly agree to have their data shared online. After receiving a few promotional emails or text messages, they may wish to opt-out. 

Make it easy for people to opt-out. You should add an “unsubscribe” link at the end of your promotional emails. A good rule to follow is making sure that opting out of sharing data isn’t more difficult than opting in.

4. Control Customer Data Visibility

Utilizing an access control model is a crucial part of data privacy and marketing. While consumer data is valuable, not everyone in the organization needs it to do their job. Limit the people who have access to consumer data to only those that need it. Not even everyone in the marketing department should be able to access information that users are sharing with the organization. 

The people who have access should be trained in how to handle it. Data leaks or breaches can have serious consequences. The more people have access to consumer data, the higher the chances of a data leak. To make sure your data is safe from external threats as well, you should keep your customer data encrypted at all times. For this, you can use a VPN.

5. Use New Metrics to Measure Success

As data privacy regulations become stricter, it becomes more difficult to measure the success of your campaigns due to the less precise landscape. But, you can still track engagement, which may be all you need to see what works and what doesn’t.

Some examples of engagement are:

• Clicks
• Conversions
• Unsubscribers
• Click-through rate

Other valuable metrics that don’t infringe on customer data are the CPL (Cost Per Lead) and CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). Knowing how much money you spend on acquiring new clients can help you determine whether you need to adjust your approach.

These can all be useful metrics. You may need to adjust your marketing content to align with the new way of measuring success.

Data privacy concerns and regulations are changing the ways digital marketing works. Advanced tracking and cookies are discouraged as users become more aware of the dangers of sharing their data. This calls for digital marketers to find creative solutions to remain effective while abiding by changing expectations and regulatory standards. Are you up to the challenge?